As an escape from the horrors of this world, I've been turning to board games as a distraction. I figured talking about what I've been playing might be a nice escape for Blogography as well. So this means I'll have Caturday on Saturday, Bullet Sunday on Sunday, and Game Week Wednesday on Wednesday. One less thing to think about each week, I guess.
I have been a Solitaire fan since forever. I played it with cards as a kid after my mom taught it to me... and then played on the computer when it became the de-facto digital game no matter what platform you were on. I have played many, many versions on computers over the years (anybody remember Kitty Spangles Solitaire?) and always come back to it when I need a quick distraction.
Until... Puzzle Dungeon!
This is a fun solitaire game that came out around 2020, I think. You're essentially battling your way through a dungeon, and I loved it. Eventually I got an extended print-and-play version and was hooked. But then I ended up losing all of it and Puzzle Dungeon was forgotten.
Until... my board game renaissance!
I looked for Puzzle Dungeon but couldn't find it for sale anywhere. But then the creator, Brian Garber, put up a pre-order for the game on his Etsy shop and I never clicked the BUY button on anything so fast.
And the game arrived last week! I've been playing it quite a lot (on the beautiful play mat you can buy for the game)...
From Brian's Etsy page...
What is Puzzle Dungeon? Puzzle Dungeon is a solo card game where you use one hero to battle 20 monsters. Each hero lists the types of monsters they're hunting. The goal of the game is to collect those monsters before running out of weapons.
Game Play: Each game is played using one hero, twenty unique monsters, and a thirty-two card arsenal deck. You'll deal and draw cards from the arsenal deck and try to match their suits to the monsters your hero is hunting. When you match with a monster, you discard the cards used and gain that monster's loot. If you can defeat all of the monsters your hero is hunting before you run out of cards, you win. You can play over 550 times using a different hero without any repeats. No other card game offers this much replayability.
And now... a warning...
This game will kick your ass... at first. It takes a while to get a handle on how the decks work and what the best approach is to deal with the monsters you're facing. But once you get a feel for that? It can still be quite a challenge, but it's an addictive one because you know what you're doing and can look ahead to how it works. Having not played it in years, I'm currently losing more than I'm winning but still having a blast.
I love Puzzle Dungeon. And pre-ordered both the Pets and Intro Deck which release next month.
If you end up buying the game, don't forget to pick up a play mat... it's pretty great, and a steal at just $25!
Dramatic lighting effect wasn't planned... it just turned out that way while I was organizing the box!
POSITIVES: Fun to play. Beautiful to look at. Quality parts. Massive variety for replayability.
NEGATIVES: The excellent storage box doesn't have room to sleeve the cards. Hopefully we eventually get a "big box" which allows for this.
Puzzle Dungeon (Art of Brian Garber Games)
★★★★★★★★★★
BLOGOGRAPHY GAME WEEK WEDNESDAY SCORE: 10 out of 10.
This week I'll be diving into a game I started playing this past Saturday on Halloween.... Arkham Horror, The Card Game. I played the original years and years ago and enjoyed it, but there was so much stuff available out there that I didn't even know where to begin when it comes to buying in. So I decided to pass.
But then earlier this year Fantasy Flight announced a new Chapter 2: Core Set which created a jumping on point for new players and collectors. This was perfect for me because it meant I wouldn't have to sell my home to afford all the older Arkham Horror content. For anybody unfamiliar, this is a game of fighting evil in a Lovecraftian horror setting...
Because there wasn't much stuff released yet, I picked up the new Arkham Horror, The Card Game: Chapter 2 Core Set, the Children of Blood small expansion, the Marie Lambeau investigator deck, and I pre-ordered the Traces to Nowhere scenario pack which just arrived last week...
I told myself that if I end up loving the game, I'll buy the remaining investigator decks (Tommy Muldoon, Carolyn Fern, André Patel, and Miguel De La Cruz). So let's take a look, shall we?
The game itself can be fairly complex and things can get really big very quickly. Usually I find myself playing two-handed solo rather than true solo when it comes to cooperative games like this, but the prospect feels a bit daunting. So I started out with the core set's first scenario... Brethren of Ash: Spreading Flames using the recommended core box investigator pre-built deck: Joe Diamond...
I ended up winning the scenario... barely. Probably because I have such limited experience with the game and it was quite a while ago (I'd imagine it wouldn't have been very challenging to experienced players). I'm looking forward to the second scenario: Smoke and Mirrors. And I can already see how I will want to try the first scenario again using a different investigator.
Ultimately this is a fantastic game. Suitably spooky, nicely immersive, and there's a puzzley aspect I enjoy about it. The art is mostly okay and the cards are quality. About the only disappointment is that the cards have to lay down in the box because the included dividers are too tall...
This makes zero sense, and I don't get why they wouldn't have just made the box taller so you can use the dividers as intended. As if that wasn't bad enough, if you sleeve your cards they are a bit tight in the box tray, which is also kinda stupid. You have to wonder what they were thinking. It's as if the people designing the packaging don't understand the hobby.
Fantasy Flight has laid out their plans for future Chapter 2 releases, and it's not without controversy...
Because Arkham Horror LCG and Marvel Champions are both designed by Fantasy Flight Games, there's some similarities how the game works. In many ways, Arkham feels like a more grown-up, challenging, and difficult version of Champions, which is kinda nice. If I'm up for a challenge? Arkham. If I want to decompress and enjoy myself? Champions.
What I'm wondering is whether or not some independent amateur game designers will bring back 8-scenario campaigns to give away for those players who miss a longer, more engrossing story. It seems a safe bet. Whenever the publishers drop disappointment on a beloved game, the community seems to step up when needed. All you need to take advantage of it is a way to print and cut cards, and there's lots of places for that.
POSITIVES: Tried and true gameplay that is loads of fun. Everything about the way it's been designed is made to flow nicely and make sense. The immersion is great, and the writing in the campaign book is atmospheric and impressive. The replayability takes a hit since the campaigns are always the same, but being able to play through with new investigators will give you a new experience, and being able to design your own decks gives it much better replayability than you'd think. And when you get bored of it, you you can just buy new content.
NEGATIVES: The art is mostly okay, but sometimes not very good at all. You'd think for a game with horror in the name they would come up with creepier, darker, and more inventive art than they did. Maybe it's cost-cutting to hire newer and less-experienced artists... but that just makes cheaping out on the campaign length even more inexplicable. That being said, it's all perfectly playable... unlike the box and tray, which fail at the one thing it's supposed to do. There's also a lingering feeling that you just didn't get your money's worth given how expensive the game is, which is why I've dropped the score a point.
Arkham Horror The Card Game, Chapter 2: Core Set (Fantasy Flight Games)
★★★★★★★★★☆
BLOGOGRAPHY GAME WEEK WEDNESDAY SCORE: 9 out of 10.
This is very disappointing. Where is the horror? My comment on the intro video is this: "A deckbuilding expansion to play with what? I started playing Arkham Horror LCG with Chapter 2, and all I have is the 3 scenario introduction, a 3 scenario mini campaign, and a single scenario pack. Everything from Chapter 1 is sold out. — This is Marvel Champions all over again. Absolutely no consideration for new players just getting into the game. Put your old stuff back in print so people who want to play have options other than spending a fortune on eBay for the stuff you've abandoned."
Maybe I should knock off another star? Couldn't we have gotten a new campaign before deckbuilding cards?
Last week I had to skip games so I could talk election results, so this week we're going to talk about one of the most enduring deck-building games ever made... Aeon's End.
But first? A little history. The first modern deck-building game is Dominion, which was released in 2008. Everybody starts with the same deck of cards. Over the course of the game, you work to improve and strengthen your deck to win. Dominion is still going strong today with new expansions, but I've only ever played the first box. It's fun, but only really works with a group of people and I couldn't find people wanting to play.
Aeon's End went completely under my radar. I had no idea it existed until a woman held up the box of one of the expansions... The Descent... as an example as to why board games should have ratings like video games, because they're "driving children to worship Satan"...
I had never played the game, but I immediately knew this was fucking bullshit. Just like the self-righteous condemnation of Dungeons & Dragons was fucking bullshit before it. So I Googled it and, sure enough, you play as mages trying to stop the monsters and demons and evil from unleashing destruction. I was intrigued, so I bought the game back in 2024 when I started getting back into board games.
It's considerably different from Dominion despite being another deck-building game. It's also more difficult. But I enjoyed the challenge and decided to buy more expansions. Oddly enough, the rest of The Descent's "Wave 8" sets were nowhere to be found. So instead I went backwards... filling in the bits and pieces I could find. And when the "Wave 10" Kickstarter showed up with the ability to buy all the old stuff I was missing, I did that (due to arrive March, 2027, baby!). In the meanwhile, I've been playing some of the stuff I own to switch things up. Starting with "Wave 4" because I like the Expedition Mode it introduced...
Your task in the game is for you (and optional friends) to select a "Breach Mage" to play. You then have the various abilities and skills of that mage to battle the forces of evil that are trying to invade and destroy your world. Along the way you open breaches to collect energy (called "aether") to cast spells. It's all very cool and flows beautifully because it does one thing very, very different from other deck-building games.
You can't shuffle your deck!
Instead you have be very smart about where and when you acquire the cards you add to your deck and when you play them so that they will circle around again in a way that benefits you in future plays. It's pretty genius, because you can look through your discard pile at any time to plan your strategy. It's like a big puzzle you have to figure out. Which is probably why I love it so much.
Despite it sounding difficult to get into, it really isn't. It's actually quite approachable and straightforward to play. And play. And play. Because there's just so much content out there. And it all works together. You can mix stuff from the earliest sets with the latest, and it all works fine. Different enemies (called "nemeses") present different challenges, and playing different mages adds variety. I've played dozens of games and haven't gotten tired of it yet.
Aeon's End plays true solo just fine. But it's a lot more interesting to play the game solo as two-handed so you get some interaction between the mages going on. On the other end of the spectrum, playing with more than two people can drag things out in a way that's annoying. Though that mostly depends on the group you're playing with, I suppose. Some people love it, because one of the defining play mechanics of the game is a randomized turn order, and the more players you have the more insane things can get.
POSITIVES: Lots of fun. Tons of material to explore and options to try gives you loads of replayability. The mechanics of play are fantastic, and can get pretty exciting once you're into the thick of things. On top of that, the games and their expansions feel like a bargain, because they include a lot of cards with new stuff to play and often go on sale. Playing solo is not only possible, but an excellent experience.
NEGATIVES: You don't have to buy everything that's been released, but you'll want to... and that will get very expensive very fast. Additionally, two of the waves ("Wave 3" and "Wave 6") are Legacy games, which is not something I'm into. So if you're playing the games for the overall story that's getting told, you're going to be missing pieces if you don't buy into them. Not that this is critical to play the game, but it's still a bit disappointing that the Legacy stuff isn't separate. Unfortunately if you do buy the games, a lot of the legacy stuff can't be mixed in with the rest.
Aeon's End (Indie Boards and Cards)
★★★★★★★★★☆
BLOGOGRAPHY GAME WEEK WEDNESDAY SCORE: 9 out of 10.
Atom Entries Feed Comments Feed
